a merry caw-caw for Thanksgiving

GIVE THANKS

We give thanks for life’s poetry

which arrives (unexpected)

through gates of neglected

farmyards.  For the spare mystery

of solitary lighthouses, beaming

steady wheel-spokes

(Rhode Island folks

know what we say, dreaming

sea-woven Narragansett night).

A merry caw-caw

semaphores her law

by roof-smoke... Raven’s last rite;

like Roy Van Doublegram – cross-eyed

matryoshka doll

(owl in a well) –

Hagia Sophia’s multiocular Argo-hide

(serpentine tesserae’s bronze

glint, like Quetzalcoatl

drifting up from Mexico).

For being lifted up to heaven’s

dome, by way of Providence

(O supernatural Grace).

Who is that Falcon-Ace

on Ibis-wing, speeding to silence?

Emily, Cordelia... be

with me now.  Will

must climb volcano-hill...

Love’s Istanbul (Turkey).

11.20.18

for Martin Luther King

DEEP SPRING

          for Martin Luther King

Late April snow.  A blinding white

50 years after Lorraine

Motel.  Memphis, again.

River-Land, seeking an Ocean State.

Rich port-of-call – the 51st, maybe?

Lost Black Sea pebble,

gray whale in trouble

(silent in the silence).  Who is she?

Grace filters into Providence

through stubborn darkness.

Rose Island light – less

diamond than dawn translucence –

only a signal for a wayward eye.

A Chartres chart, or maze

from Notre Dame (haze

mollifies her frozen sky).

The sleepwalkers smolder through smoke-

machines.  Father & son,

their colder war passed on –

unfriendly history (life’s but a joke).

Still roses bloom, in Galilee –

galactic Okean

become a local pond;

folksinging Nazir calling me

to dance, & calling you as well.

Deep spring’s Unknowability

leaps into charity –

a little Noah-boat skims out of hell.

4.4.18

I have a dream

PLAIN CLAY

I have a dream, sang the buffalo-

voice, I have a dream –

when the will to redeem

lifts a heavy soul, bent low

amid murky murmurs of lost

innocence, out of the lake

of fire (nightmare). Take

my hand, come to this Pentecost –

harvest of kid from lambent cave

(wick drawn from water

up to Pharaoh’s daughter –

firefly corn-blaze, flickering in nave).

Lean petrified wraiths gaze, wingèd

through Ravenna gloom.

Dante walks home,

his lesson fin (carving INTREPID

into night’s milky ark of galaxies).

A net resolves to surf;

a seine makes common turf

out of plain clay – paradoxical

Francisco-mule, clip-clop clumping

until he climb the octahedral

keystone of the cathedral –

orange Chinese lantern, miming

remote & lonely lighthouses

(Rose Island Light, for

Narragansett raven-shore).

Sun in your beak (Cautantowwit’s).

8.28.17

the crumbling infrastructure of democracy

TURTLE-DOME

On Coney Island of the West

in Lake Waconia

some paraphernalia

of archaeological interest

has surfaced.  Shards, arrowheads

of prehistoric hunters

peek from beachcombers’

pebble-piles, a gravel shed’s

debris (shale chips, random limestone

scrap).  America

was born of such disjecta

membranes.  Origins are alien.

The poem is gratuitous.

Nature is useless too –

a toy made out of blue

marble, flotsam, detritus.

Ocean is grey as morning twilight.

Clouds, frail shells, gull-

feathers.  Breakers roll

the whole toward a more perfect

Union (not quite).  The whole thing

needs but the slightest

nudge to knock the rest

into a nest of lovable, hurtling

good will... like Roger Williams’

Rogues’ Island – Rog’s

Island – paradox

of durable Rose Lighthouse beams

                     *

outlasting slander & contempt

spilled from sharp fork-

tongued human mark-

of-Cain mistrust.  None be exempt,

Pilgrim.  We all fall in the ditch

led by Venetian blinds men.

We have to clamber again

toward mutual forgiveness (each

to each) if we would be free, just

free (happy).  Restore

the crumbling infrastructure

of democracy – liable to rust –

with a sense of gratitude... play!

This is the order of the day

quadratic creatures cry

mounted on the fiery rim of a sky-

born Thunderbird.  Red Wing

was where she landed –

one cosmic six-handed

octahedral diamond bling-a-ling

like a yellow gyroscope   spinning

from the calyx of a rose

aubade   the center glows

with its own light... the winning

smile   an Okie restoration

out of an almond shell

riding her great sea-swell

vast   turtle-dome   Reunion

3.13.17

the whole sweet Seine will glow

TINY BULB

A ghost of snow hung in the air

like glittering smoke.

Dusted from a hemlock

by a twirling jay – like nothing there.

Harsh cold rain goes crystalline,

shines in white waves

of domes (over sea-caves,

graves of grass).  Adamantine

turtleshell or judgement seat

of green sea-swell

beyond heaven & hell...

only a murmur makes complete

your copper frame, chère Liberty.

Emerald cicada husked

in tamaracks, at dusk –

vesture & camouflage for thee,

O soul set free!  Out of the spiral

gloom of time you come,

crown of the human kingdom –

like yellow-black spry swallowtail

up from your petrified cocoon,

or incognito monarch

skittering from ark

to ark (Amsterdam-Rangoon

Line – Mendelssohn to Mexico)

– or like a tiny bulb

planted in mirror-hub

of rose islands – blazing so

                *

bright the whole sweet Seine will glow

from end to end –

the safety net, my friend!

Jonah’s repast (Apollinaire’s tomorrow).

Thus the planet’s plain warm hearth

was set in diamond

& salt – with two kind

hands melded was gentle Earth

into a homely heart (Heimlich

maneuver from afar).

Gates cracked ajar –

the broken cistern, Cain’s conflict –

the Minotaur in every man –

the frozen ideologies,

bitter mythologies

of gulag-mind, in her began

to melt... the light played on the iron

spring... rust turned

green... mold burned

clear... the Psyche-lamp of Zion

lifted from the harbor.  Then

that fireplace couch of ages

in the molten kiln of sages

rose from black soil – crowed the Hen-

Cock!  Morning gathering beneath

the lighthouse surfaced

in your radiant face

O Matrix of candescent wreath.

12.13.16

across languages & worlds

CEDAR HANDS

O calm August river, weaving

under your ceiling of gray

fluff!  I’d like to say

you are a figure for Edith, rocking,

singing Sophie to sleep, somewhere

above Ethiopian night.

I’d like to formulate

a lamp in a window, out there

on a foggy lump in Narragansett Bay –

Rose Island Light, maybe –

what stands for certainty

in the midst of rocky sea, the sway

of tide.  They’re almost finished now

with the bridge repair.

Her double eyebrows bear

their concrete filigree, & show

twin circles in the river’s glass.

Their delicate embrace

a fractal carapace

for curving lips of one round lass –

a sea-green pebble, calipered

by radiant massive Einstein

armature.  So shine,

my lighthouse pine – like shy brown bird

or Great Blue Heron – one sharp eye

across the moving waters!

Agape holds stars

in loving stillness – rhyming sky

                      *

with earth.  It is an ur-rhyme, personal –

a Neva-petroglyph,

an anchored spider-skiff,

chaste common akme (Eeyore-humble);

like moony pleb with sunny Phoebus,

roaming Apollinaire

with domed Apollinaris,

Love is that hearth-melding force

that fuses Unity & Liberty –

soul freedom is the spark

of arcs.  I found a monarch,

lonely, in the donkey straw you see

down by the iron river (pausing,

perhaps, between White

House & Soldier’s Rest).

We bowed to one another, browsing

sheared grass, cordially.

The song began like this –

a dream made manifest,

Railsplitter... prodigal Boy...

held in grey threads of dog days’

dawnlight.  Soft rainbow

pigeon croon – low

throaty turtledove song-maze –

dream-songe across the meadowlands

of languages & worlds

farfalla-far – she whirls

& jags... floats into cedar hands.

8.12.16

Franklin Ave. Bridge